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What we are thinking about.

Essays on technology, AI, the African digital economy and the work of building products, from the team in Dar es Salaam.

Essays

The first essays are in preparation.Get each one as it goes up

Showing all 8 essays

Technology

Building for intermittent networks and low cost devices

Why the constraint that looks like a limitation is actually the design brief.

What this essay covers

  1. Why a weak network and a cheap phone are the design brief, not a limitation.
  2. What offline first means in practice: keep working, then sync.
  3. The trade-offs this forces on screens, data and storage.

Artificial Intelligence

When software stops recording and starts deciding

The architectural difference between storing the past and reasoning over it.

What it covers
  • The difference between storing the past and reasoning over it.
  • What changes in a system when an AI layer reads across every record.
  • Where a suggestion ends and a decision begins.

African Digital Economy

The connected platform thesis

Why isolated applications will not build the next digital economy.

What it covers
  • Why isolated applications will not build the next digital economy.
  • How shared identity, payments and records add up across products.
  • What connecting products asks of the people who build them.

Agriculture

The verified record as collateral

How a shared history turns informal activity into something a lender can price.

What it covers
  • How a shared history turns informal activity into a record.
  • What a lender needs to see before it can price that record.
  • Why the cooperative is the natural place to keep it.

Retail

Selling through the outage

What we are learning from putting an offline-first till into Tanzanian shops.

What it covers
  • What we are learning from an offline-first till in Tanzanian shops.
  • How sales are kept safe while the network is down.
  • What field testing has changed in the product.

Finance

Embedded finance without a licence

Working through licensed partners, and what that constrains.

What it covers
  • How finance and insurance reach users through licensed partners.
  • What that arrangement allows, and what it constrains.
  • How to describe the result honestly to customers.

Entrepreneurship

Building a venture studio in Dar es Salaam

Capital allocation across a portfolio when every product wants the same engineer.

What it covers
  • How capital is allocated across a portfolio of products.
  • What happens when every product wants the same engineer.
  • What the products share, and what they keep separate.

Product Development

Naming a launch user

The single decision most early products avoid making.

What it covers
  • The single decision most early products avoid making.
  • Why one named user makes every other choice easier.
  • How to choose that user, and when to change them.
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